I have spent that last what must be 4 hours doing the battle square in the games room of the Ice Palace! But it all seems well worth it :D .

I must have fought 250 opponents (plus reloads) until I'd finished every level of every rank!

The reason I'm telling you this is because I found an awesome weapon. When my fighter was confirmed as the "Battle Master" after finishing the 10th rank, I was awarded with a short sword (amongst other things) called "Brilliant Short Sword +5". A +5 weapon in chapter 2??!!? Not only this, but this weapon excludes AC provided by armour and shields, which combined with its +5 to hit means that basically every strike is assured! The only AC that will prevent the attack bonus by the looks of things are dodge/generic, magical and dexterity modifiers. What I'm thinking now is to invest a level of fighter into my rogue (using weapons finesse) and applying a permament +5 power attack. His BAB's are high enough to compensate for this (combined with the +5 to hit from the weapon and the +5 from a dexterity of 20) so he will basically have *assured* strikes of 1D6+10! And all without a STR modifier! This seams way to good so be true.

Has anyone managed the battle square on HoF mode? I would love to know what the treasure for being Battle Master is for this.....

LOL, after the last patch you cannot summon monsters in battle squares (IIRC) so i doubt anyone has done that in HoF mode.

I beat it in Heart of Fury pre patch.... but with the new patch I think there is still cheese that would allow you to beat it. THIS SHOULD NOT BE POSSIBLE: But you can cast Firesheild Red + Firesheild Blue on a caster at the same time, which is ridiculous cuz they do the opposite effect, then you cast Otilukes Resilient sphere on yourself. Heres the kicker: You take NO damage cuz of ORS but they take 30-60(at level 17-30) damage everytime they strike you. However, if they dont attack fast enoough, it wont work. Ever since they took away Improved invis and the better animate dead this has been my favorite cheese. This tactic also works with "Ironskins" since it gives you insane damage reduction like 9876365/+3(not a joke this came up!) then you walk around fire sheilded and let the enemy take damage. But if they got +4,+5 weapons you'll want to stick with ORS.

in HoF mode, does the items change?? (the items you gain from the battle square)

It's a good idea to complete battle square at chapter 4. Because you gain LOTS of XP after each rank. (3000 per level at rank 10!) And your level gets higher and if you dont squat you get lesser xp for kills. I wonder if in Heart of Fury mode does the items change? I dont think so.

One more thing, many items are not useful but they are great for sale. for ex, the bracers which gives +4 ac -2 dex.

I'm going to hang on to these for now though. -2 DEX incurs a 1 point AC penalty, but the +2 AC more than compensates for this. I like being able to cast Horrid Wilting and conjure Water Elemental at only level 11.

This is what I'd like to know. The manual states that the rewards are generally far greater when playing in HoF mode, so I wondered how you could improve on an awesome +5 weapon!

Hmm, how is this XP calculated for the battle square? I got 9000XP for completing rank 10 and another 7000 ish for being Battle Master, that was for a level 10 fighter.

Jim,

Some more details:

I just finished level 8 of the battle squares using a level 12 fighter and got ~3300 xp for completing one rank within that level. (If I remember this right, in addition to the item you get at the END of each level, you can also get either xp or additional items during each RANK of each level). I believe that the xp is calculated based on the CR rating system in a similiar manner as xp is calculated for NWN; i.e. based on the monster difficulty rating and the level of the characters.

The HoF weapons generally have better attack bonuses and/or damage; but in the case of +5 weapons they usually get additional spell properties or immunities added in. Some +1 items are upgraded to +3 and have additional properties thrown in. From what I can tell not all of the items get upgraded.

Additionally, the "summon monster" cheese that was allowed PRE-PATCH does NOT work anymore. I ended up using a LOT of buff spells with magic circle against evil, champions strength, cat's grace, stoneskin, haste and aid. I tossed in prayer, recitation, and bless and reapplied them as needed after each rank and an occassional protection from fire and minor elemental shield tossed in. I tried to hit the first two or three ranks as FAST as possible before the haste ran out, and then on the later ranks prayed that the Cornugons, Gelugons and Glabrezu would show up so that the club of disruption could do its work. [img]smile.gif[/img] The one monster I HATED seeing show up was the Greater Feyr!!! Hated those things ...

Hi Micah, good to see you [img]smile.gif[/img] Been a long time!

Yes, I noticed this too. It seemed to pretty much be 50/50 which you got after each level. The items wern't that useful though (mainly high enchantment missile weapon ammo, gold and gems) so I hoped for the XP at this point.

I've noticed this too. Many of the easier enemies (dire wolves for example) yield no XP whatsoever for my now level 12 party. Since this is the case, surely it would be most rewarding XP wise to conquer the square at lower levels?

Have you beaten the game on HoF yet? I'll give it a go next time round (only had this game a couple of weeks since europe had major shipping problems with this game :( )

LOL I quite enjoyed battling this one. It gave my battle square character a breather since it constantly teleported to the room where my party was being held so I could administer a savage beatng using 5 characters :D

The main tactic I used for the battle square involved using no summoning cheese. It did involve what many people will refer to as cheese though...As soon as I started encountering larger opponents (giants/demons/Remorhaz etc) I opened the double doors at the top of the games room, sneaked through, waited for the opponent to follow (who of course was too large to fit through), and then poked them to death using long reach polearms and 2-Handed swords from a distance :D That was a majorly effective strategy. Smaller but no less fearsome demonic/undead opponents were taken care of using the club of disruption (even though some of the more powerful creatures could only fail their saves on a roll of 1 - still its 5% chance each hit).

Is it possible for me to go from chapeter3 back to chapther2 to win the battle square or did i miss out :(

Jim,

Yes it has been a while. How have you been? [img]smile.gif[/img]

I noticed i was either getting xp, a bunch of gold and a missile weapon (anything from stunning +1 to +5) or a lesser value gem, a scroll (anything up to 9th level), or a really nice gem.

As far as the battle squares are concerned, beating them at a lower level is definitely better for xp but not sure how the xp in the REST of the game would be adjusted since those encounters would also be adjusted downward by the the highe level of your party. It's a trade off I would think. I ended up bypassing the battle squares until after I had done ALL of the wandering village quests, including the cold marshes but BEFORE the river caves. I went in at 11th level and will leave at 12th, MAYBE 13th.

No. [img]smile.gif[/img] Haven't beaten the game on HoF mode, but i did sneak a peak at some HoF item descriptions. [img]smile.gif[/img] You DO want to play this on HoF mode. lol Some of the HoF items are AWESOME!

re: Greater Feyrs - the only problem was that MOST of my buffs went on the fighter doing the heavy damage (and I DO mean heavy - as he had a modified 30 strength and a 28 AC!). The rest of the party was a lot more vulnerable. [img]smile.gif[/img] I had more trouble, once i got the club, with the remorrhaz and feyrs than with the elementals or conurgons et al. lol I end flipping between the axe of shocking burst and club of disruption depending on weapon vulnerabilities of the monsters.